


obstringal

by Alias (anafabula)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror (mild), Coming Untouched, Fallen Hero - Hero Corrupted to Evil, Hand & Finger Kink, Horror - Cosmic Horror, M/M, Oral Fingering, Oral Fixation, Porn with the suggestion of other plot happening elsewhere, Post-120, Questionable consent due to spiders, Supernatural Voyeurism, Transformation - Slowly Turning Into A Monster, Voyeur fantasizes that it’s nonconsensual, Voyeurism - watching loved one with someone else, Web!Martin, ambiguous consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-19 11:11:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16533473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias
Summary: When Jon presses his face against Martin’s neck, searching out the texture of his pulse, Martin still makes such an expression of stricken gratitude and disbelief at being found worthy of this examination that one could almost mistake his god for Elias’s own.Almost.





	obstringal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nelja-in-English (Nelja)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/gifts).



> [**Obstringal**](https://twitter.com/fantasticvocab/status/703233166232965121), _adj._ the relation of concealing binding

People around him, nigh-invariably, end up caught up in the question of humans versus monsters, and Elias is long past finding the question pointless. Individuals as a result of patron or origin may well differ in terms of will and autonomy, but the extent to which that defines them or not as a _person_ is largely, in the end, _their_ choice, loath as they generally are to admit it. The whole combination makes the line of inquiry pointless at best, hostile at worst, when no matter the subject of the day it’s safe to expect too much identity built on the substrate of the answer for the data itself to be useful. Some agents lean into monstrosity to ease their way, and thus are biased; others opt for pointless clinging to an arbitrary idea of humanity and thus grow hostile if this is questioned; very rarely does the choice of coping strategy correlate with the individual-to-be-questioned’s distance from their supposed common baseline. Save times the framework has practical utility — rarely, and near-exclusively for the purpose of sadism — Elias is long past engaging with it.

That doesn’t dispense with the need to mark those who are not by consensus human, of course; it merely sidesteps the tiresome part, at the expense of forcing him into inventing his own framework. He’s been satisfied with this one for some time, however: Elias thinks in terms of metaphors.

An average human — a “real” one, a strictly and conventionally realistic one — is bound to the restrictive span of possibilities laid out by physical law, however socially aberrant they may opt to be. Flippant as it was he made his point to Jonathan this way for a reason: necessity dictates that a human who exists in time and space will bleed and, should that escalate, will die, and until then will be propelled more or less in terms of individual choices made within itself, however conscious or coerced. Humans can lie, murder, abandon, and violate; they don’t get to choose not to eat or breathe or sleep or die. They are bound to the necessary and the literal.

Given the great powers as the opposite, the unholy and endless formless things whose touch is all but a misnomer, the framework he gets actual use out of follows naturally. Inexorably, even. A god’s gravitational pull brings those taken by it ever further from the literally real to something more like themselves, shedding strict logical possibility on the way.

Monsters are irrelevant, but Elias spends his life, as such, dealing in metaphors. And it fascinates him, almost selfishly, if such a thing were still possible for him now, to see the ways this can be writ into being ever-clearer on the approximate canvas of human body and human mind.

Consider, for instance, the case of Jonathan Sims, his progress faster and less ambiguous than Elias had risked hoping. He breathes only to speak, though he does not speak solely to inquire, and while his eyes are still capable of closing, he does not blink. (They open and close now, somewhat fitfully, but in long inhuman stretches even so; Elias watches Jon war with himself, caught between sinking fully into what he’s doing and the ever-beating need to watch its effects. He watches Jon not know he is being watched, and takes no small amount of pleasure in the looming awareness that this, too, will not last much longer.) Elias hasn’t touched him, has not been able to touch him, since Jon awoke, but nonetheless is aware of the strange temperature of his skin, not shockingly cold by human standards as much as the room-temperature near-irrelevance of air: Jon reveals little to and changes less about what touches him, now, and still (this, too, Elias has been watching) people startle well at this physical expression of the Archivist’s indifference.  
  
Some people, at any rate. Most: those who cross him by accident, in passing, expecting something like themselves, ready to suffer the shock of its lack.  
  
Most people. Not all.  
  
Not, for instance, Martin. Never Martin, Elias thinks, or at least close to; never Martin, not any more.  
  
Consider as such Martin Blackwood, such an unexpectedly consistent pleasant surprise. The potential Elias saw in him a decade ago was roundly as a useful tool but by no means a self-directed one. Giving him to Jon was done with intent, of course, but then as ever Elias looked at him — determined, quick, a hopeless liar, and now painfully lovestruck as well — and assumed a lack of agency when factoring his uses. And Elias had been, has been, _wrong_. Rarely has he expected something of Martin and not had it end in surprise. And that state of affairs is only likely to continue, now, because Elias can no longer read his mind.

He’d not expected Martin to survive; to be useful; to fight. He’d certainly not expected him to be _interesting_.

Once Elias had gotten reasonably certain that he wouldn’t be murdered and resigned himself to the long slow process of getting out of his own murder conviction — also thanks to Martin, as he figures such things, so perhaps he should see the results here as justified recompense, if only to tell Martin that himself and see how hard he recoils — Elias’s main concern for his own maintenance was effectively that of boredom. (Which, admittedly, is a risk that comes far closer to undergirding Maslow’s pyramid for someone like him. Turns out the threshold for effective, damaging sensory deprivation climbs alongside the gains and gains in sphere of input itself.) And for all that Elias trusts Peter Lukas, at least from a broad strokes kind of perspective — that is, if only in that he trusts him to be Peter, for every useful and damaging definition thereof — there’s only so much spying Elias can do, day to day, on the Institute he can’t touch, before he’d go another kind of stir-crazy. For all the glory in the Archivist’s dreamscape, meanwhile, there is only so much Elias could allow himself to watch before the concern of an observer affecting such a delicately singular state of superimposition became too great. He’s kept tabs on every interesting misery within mental earshot for all his professional life, of course, but that just means it’s hardly enough to get by on alone.

And once again Martin failed to disappoint when Elias had a use for him, for all that Elias hadn’t bothered to expect anything out of him in particular but a reasonably predictable lack of absence. Instead he’s had the openly fascinating experience, these past months, of watching Martin edge out of the field that is Elias’s apperception and come into his own.

It has been, in a specific, awful, elusory way, tinted heavily with the resulting potential and then the actual excellent use, a pleasure to see. Though it can’t not make Elias wonder, still: if he’d looked into Martin sooner, would Martin still be laid open into comprehension for Elias now?

Because he very much is not, not any more, and never will be again. The elusiveness of him isn’t the wretched, loathsome way of the Stranger; he’d hardly be letting Martin touch his Archivist otherwise. Rather Elias sees, with direct and easy truth (failing extenuating circumstances), exactly what Martin is. And he can see anything he cares to that Martin does: at precisely the infinitesimal rate of delay of Martin first having done it, all action and reaction and effect. Elias gets nothing further. No thought or feeling laid bare, no weight of undisclosed intention, perhaps only a guess as to when he _lies_. Martin’s god has made him visible and illegible.

It does make sense: Martin’s god is already doubled in aspect between the skittering weaver and the more ephemeral unseen hand in perpetual, extradimensional control. It makes _sense,_ and fits Elias’s own personal models comfortably; that doesn’t mean he has to like it.  
  
Because Elias watches, as such; now, always, of course he does, when that which would elude this watching deserves only to be seen and then destroyed. He watches but he does not know.  
  
And he wonders, tonight, more or less, as Jon fights himself so that his lashes flutter again and Martin makes a low wounded noise of desperate awe and near-disbelief, if Martin knows what he is and could be doing, in part or in full. How much of this he restrains and how much of it he’s chosen.  
  
Here is why the Web is dangerous, why the two powers are so tightly aligned now but have never been allied: Elias can’t tell, even from Jon’s point of view, whether this is what Jon wants.

Or perhaps _why_ this is what Jon wants. He does seem to want it.

He started it, after all, and in many ways remains the one pushing onward now: both in general, and on the Institute basement cot, at this moment.

Elias does have multiple reasons to appreciate that Martin’s only asked Jon to his own flat once. It turns out that in his own space — not surprising, this, but deeply, endlessly unfortunate — Martin’s new inscrutability extends beyond himself, even to _Jon_ , lending Elias’s own perception a two-dimensionally disorientating surreal quality. It made him feel cheated as well as sick as a result, when his witnessing of that singular confrontation was so forced and forcibly _shallow_ : not just the all-consuming personal mortal terror there are so previously few opportunities to see in Jon any more, itself loss enough, but the more permanently merely superficial glancing hints of Martin’s horrified, choking guilt at the fact that he’d somehow not factored in that his flat is full of spiders. Elias can’t taste how close Martin came to tears, if at all, and the matter was uncertain if judged on the brightness of his eyes alone; can’t know if he had to blink away the hot rush of remorse for Jon’s sake, how hard it was to kill his own emotions for the purpose of damage control. Is denied the texture and timbre of Martin’s fears for Jon’s wellbeing, their nascent relationship, his own qualities of mind.

Can’t know how much of Martin already reaped that sharp, stunning joy from seeing the Archivist afraid of him.

That was once. Other than that they’ve stayed in neutral space when not within Jon’s own domain, which Elias is perfectly content with. It means that when he watches the two of them, generally, it’s either because Jon’s remembered he does technically live somewhere — which is fine — or, like tonight, they’ve called his attention in the Archives.

Elias could, he supposes, opt for disapproval of that, on a professional basis. This is manifestly inappropriate conduct for the workplace, after all, even aside from his own potential feelings on what may be done to the purest avatar of his god and by whom.

In practice such disapproval fails entirely to be relevant; it is after hours, and ultimately beneficial to the Eye, and Elias can admit a certain private satisfaction, besides, at having been witnessing how conveniently intense a reminder the break in their often-comprehensive institutional isolation that is Jon and Martin’s new relationship has been for Peter that however welcome he may be he does not belong here and must act accordingly. Elias finds it essential that his houseguests know their limits, after all. Uncertainty on that front has in fact dogged him with regards to the Web before, but Martin, incarnating it, overall seems inclined to be well-behaved.

And he does like the quality of the view.

At any rate this night had also begun innocently enough besides, such that their current state could arguably be an accident were it novel enough to qualify for the excuse, to the point where Elias had actually considered whether he had anything more interesting to eavesdrop on while attempting this relatively convincing facsimile of sleep for the general purpose of assuaging the criminal justice system. (He would eke more satisfaction from the fact that he is, in fact, under constant surveillance if it had any aspect of quality. As is it is — if moderately — frustrating, constantly, so as to outweigh the fact. Though he _is_ surrounded also by men much more resentful of their situation, and that does help.)

And anyway, the answer had been no: those of current immediate concern to him, who Elias is waiting for, move in the daylight on schedules not under his control. It is… also frustrating, even before anyone’s become late, and slow, to go through these legal and social motions he’s having to preoccupy himself with orchestrating the rest of the time at such a distance; it leads Elias to an almost sentimental appreciation for the actually consistently appealing distractions that are offered to him.

It’s been as follows: Martin found the Archivist working late — if the eyes under Jon’s absently bitter furrowed brow still blinked or lapsed in focus it would be all but impossible, given only their tableau resulting with no context, to determine the current year — and attempted to hound Jon to rest. martin’s more successful there lately than he used to be, Elias has been amused to note, regardless of how objectively low that new success rate still is in practice. The issue being that even though Martin’s right that the Archivist still needs to dream, Jon had been fighting the more esoteric research needed around a particularly unexpectedly messy statement, and as a result drove himself not to full withdrawal but still to a kind of exhaustion characterized by the lack of stimulation. Jon had thus been content _for_ stimulus, as he is surprisingly, almost charmingly often, with a more conventionally tired Martin pressed quiet and almost chaste along his frame, until — which is also typical, and far less surprising — he wasn’t.

(From Martin, the sleepily dubious — almost dutiful — “Jon, weren’t you promising me you’d rest?” But, conversely, also immediate acceptance of Jon’s response, which is not a whine due to being too busy being the snap of a whip: “Well, I still need more I can feel first, Martin,” to which it would be difficult _not_ to attach a request to which Martin Blackwood would acquiesce.)

The resulting basic dynamic has been cyclically stable for enough of their relationship that Elias feels comfortable in his readings even lacking data he’d really rather have. (Martin’s thoughts. He wants them. It will never not grate, he thinks.) Specifically, he’s confident that what he’s watching ( _still_ , after the kind of time lapsed that really should let him turn awed novelty into fond comprehensible habit) is Martin near-reflexively disbelieving, as his first line of response, any apparent interest from Jon toward him. Most likely he is conceptualizing this habit as a question of respect if not outright concern for Jon’s safety.

What it means is that Jon has to be persistent in a way that goes against his usual style of human interaction (and which Elias finds accordingly engaging — also endearing — really), nudging Martin to the understanding that Jon really did want Martin’s arms around him. Wanted them chest to chest, pressed tighter than even required by the logistics of a narrow repurposed bed, one of Jon’s hands ever-curiously mapping the confusion of Martin’s shoulder blades, which is how they’d first ended up. It’s predictable, also, that by the time Jon’s actually in a position to be initiating contact himself, that this isn’t a sufficient amount. That when Jon presses his face against Martin’s neck searching out the texture of his pulse Martin still makes such an expression of stricken gratitude and disbelief at being found worthy of this examination that one could almost mistake his god for Elias’s own. (Almost.)

By the time Jon’s not only arrived at but passed through pulling Martin up to kiss him, predictably so throughout, with distinctly analytical pleased-frustrated noises at not quite getting an observable reaction fading into something else, his skin’s likely warmed beyond that neutral air temperature from spending so long — even mostly clothed — pressed against Martin’s at least currently more conventional soft and human warmth. He’ll lose the borrowed body heat to that impossible-accuracy inertia soon enough, Elias knows, once he gets enough distance from Martin to examine him a moment.

In this as well there’s a defined pattern, though one Elias would have been much harder-pressed to guess at before the fact of a body of data to work with. He’d not actually known that Jon _likes_ kissing, for one thing, although admittedly Jon hadn’t known the more recent development in play of that he’d find himself liking it this _much_. Watching him shudder and startle and gasp just as a means of expression, Elias thinks about the known nerve density of the lips and mouth, nearly unparalleled, and about the way any interaction with the way any interaction with the internality of others scrapes Jon’s senses now to a calculated acuity he’d once lacked; and Jon, Elias can be certain, thinks about control.

Jon views his own overwhelming positive reactions as an unwieldy sort of design flaw, interfering with the more comfortably exercised ability to observe with only secondary experience as a factor. It’s a _personality_ flaw, Elias thinks, although one he’s certain Jon will eventually surpass, but it is fairly funny to watch it play out under so manifestly harmless a script as this. He’d have settled into watching Jon kiss Martin with interrogatory intensity until he squirmed and whined without meaning to — and then pushing him away — with amusement enough even if Elias _weren’t_ also quite confident that Martin himself lacks full knowledge of why, exactly, Jon does it.

Martin treats Jon’s self-defeating insecurity as a boundary on the level of physical law — which is to say, all things considered, one more negotiable than either of the novice avatars has yet to admit, and with no benefit to be had for their gods from the exercise of it whatsoever. Quite the opposite, in fact; and when he dwells on this, every now and then, Elias finds he has to stop the odd finger twitch for just how much he’d want to clarify the matter, to teach the both of them what they’re actually working with. (But for the most part he’s comfortable — as always, as is strictly and necessarily natural — with watching, and their temporary mistakes remain entertaining enough.)

Because Elias is fairly certain that Martin thinks the issue at hand is Jon not particularly liking his own sensory experiences at all, as opposed to not knowing how _to_ like… well, much of anything he’s forced to admit that he is personally involved in, even now. Elias can hardly blame Martin for that, either, it’s not exactly the most intuitive answer. (Then again, if Jon’s the question, it really never is.) Elias just has the inequitable advantage he always does in discerning it, though one he still considers to be completely wiped out on balance by the fact that with regards to Martin he can’t check his own guesses at _all_.

However, in this case, he does think he’s got it. It’s even a reasonable guess for Martin to make from available data, especially with the weighting of his own low simmering fears of his volition both personally and in function of his master. Martin’s experience of Jon as Archivist and as somewhat-fumbling partner both lead him to assume that Jon doesn’t _want_ first-order data of his own, that all he enjoys is in fact the watching. Presumably the inevitable intricate guilt that dredges inside Martin for every time he has wanted (let alone gotten) something from Jon that did prevent Jon’s evaluating Martin’s reaction while he did it proves more than enough to outweigh any doubts Martin would otherwise have about his own worthiness _as_ a subject of Jon’s scrutiny. As far as ways to be completely wrong goes, it’s really quite a solid model, more likely than not to explain future and present — that’s what makes it consistently amusing, and intermittently frustrating, for Elias to watch in action.

It is a reasonable way for Martin to make himself cede control to Jon despite confusion about his desires or what Elias is markedly sure is Martin’s own inclination in this respect, and an explanation for the obviously interested man who stops kissing him to push Martin to arm’s length every time only to then get half of Martin’s actual hand in his mouth instead of doing anything that could qualify as stopping.

And _oh_ is the way this act in particular works for the two of them a fascinating and rewarding example of the metaphors they are in play. Because it’s almost wholly arbitrary, of course: that Martin’s power should have manifest first in the threefold dexterity and reach he shows in the first place, let alone this sympathetic kind of overlap with the anatomical purpose of an actual spider’s pedipalps that would (for now) be profoundly out of place on him. There’s easily-argued reasons for the arms, regarding how Martin works, as a person; there is nothing but luck for Elias to find in terms of justifying why Martin can come untouched but for his fingers, an ability he safely assumes is soon to be demonstrated.

(Elias is quietly very glad that this _is_ what he opted to watch tonight.)

So: when he is too distracted to think about the question of his own humanity — a state Elias does personally prefer Martin in, as it happens, even at this twofold fundamental distance, any pain that _can_ be otherwise eked from Martin’s own fears of the future built on the inevitability that is his recent past having been long ago rendered a stale, pointless memory of delay — when Martin is too focused to hold back at such a metaphysical level, the physical workings of his new-old god become evident.

There’s something warm, amusing, perhaps almost endearing to be found in that what Martin manages with five free hands now as a result is currently mostly more superhuman acts of awkwardness. If he’d ever needed proof that the text of the person remains fundamentally identical, really: Martin’s got two hands at his side and the three others free do nothing so much as hover around Jon all awkward nervous adoration, fingers alighting just a bit at his waist or shoulder or arm before one hand’s snatched back so Martin can clasp it over his own mouth to fail to hold in a spike in volume. Martin touches Jon like he’s afraid to ask if he’s allowed to, and very likely is, but also like he can’t quite keep away without being actively stopped form reaching for him. Thus the cycle, here, that as long as Jon allows it Martin touches him like he’s not fully sure Jon could be real but fears more than a brush of fingertips will make him disappear and thus is willing to live in the gap before that unreality is proven.

He is real, though, and Martin should be more secure in knowing; his sixth hand is more than proof of that, and he should be taking into account — much as Elias knows it’s all anxiety more than useful, solid fear, typical again to Martin himself, and thus logic has nothing to do with it or he’d be doing better and uncharacteristic things — Martin’s certainly got his attention dominated by Jon’s uncontroverted physical existence, given that what’s stealing his breath into high shaky sounds of desperate arousal is Jon letting Martin finger his mouth.

To be blunt about it, as it were.

As such Elias watches with no small amount of interest as Martin holds himself back — always, _always_ holding back, despite every opportunity; despite his own god — to not even strain against Jon’s carefully neutral grip on his wrist, to barely brush his other hands almost chastely against Jon’s clothed shoulder and waist. Elias watches Martin clench two fists at his side and ache somewhat more selfishly to press a hand against himself, the odd muscle of the forearm or thigh jumping with the effort of keeping his hands and hips this still.

But Jon hasn’t said he’ll allow that — Elias doesn’t know, even, if Martin’s dared ask — and for now Martin values nothing more than what Jon allows him, for the simple fact that it’s Jon and he’s doing so, his awe openly palpable even now.

And Elias watches Jon watch Martin, both approvingly, still new enough to negotiating the twin boundaries of Jon’s own relationship with sex and Martin’s with what they both expect of human bodies otherwise, intent and unblinking but lashes fluttering much more slowly and consciously as he keeps lapsing into focusing on his own lips and tongue before giving in to the ever-present want to gauge Martin’s reactions as Jon moves Martin’s fingers back and forth in his mouth and Martin shudders and gasps in such a humanly inordinate way. Jon retains that nominal control centered at Martin’s wrist, for now, the grip of skin on skin that’s almost bone on bone, and Elias wonders if Jon would stop him were Martin to try to disregard it. If he took a liberty beyond how he’s being allowed to stroke along Jon’s tongue, the edges of his cheek, until the pads of his fingers drag over Jon’s lips and back in, would Jon use that grip to stop him, would his hand close on Martin’s wrist until the still-delicate bones there ground together and the desire to exceed these bounds deserted him for the time being?

Because Jon wouldn’t, strictly, have to — Elias knows even if he’s not sure either of them do yet or want to try to. Jon could take much more than this before he _had_ to struggle, let alone before a real limit could be found past that difficulty. Martin _could_ push his fingers in until Jon’s throat started to spasm out of force of mortal habit, Elias knows, has imagined; just as he knows how naturally that obsoleted reflex would subside as his Archivist so inevitably adjusted to taking in that new stimulus, in its entirety, like always.

Does Martin want, or think of himself as wanting, that kind of escalation yet, or has it not broken the barrier of habituated conscious horror? How long until the inflection point in how he thinks of agency, Elias wonders, how long? How aware is Martin now?

Elias can’t know what Martin knows or wants, only see what he does just after he does it, and it’s _infuriating_. Specifically it grinds on Elias’s nerves in a way that draws his attention and would even without the circumstance and the inevitable attractions it entails: that of the unexpected, of mild, harmless victim in waiting Martin Blackwood’s slow lovely transformation and the concurrent ebbing of Elias’s Archivist’s ability, superfluous even more than his willingness and gone accordingly in advance, to lean away from Martin as he goes further on. He can’t know how much of this Martin does deliberately, is doing deliberately, or how much more Martin already knows he could achieve. He wants to. He wants to so badly. Elias allows it to transfix him now just as Martin’s transfixed by Jon, wondering, wondering.

Has Martin ever thought about — well: obviously he’s thought about touching himself, and about touching Jon, beyond what he has permission now to do. He’d have to, to spend so much of his tight-wound attention stopping himself, so obviously afraid to ask. Elias can see in the lines of Martin’s arms as he does — not to mention the delicate threads almost manifest when Martin speaks, taut and shining with how much more of an effect he _wants_ — that Martin wouldn’t have to _take_ no for an answer, or even tolerate the awkwardness of asking. Martin is _able_ , already, to opt to make Jon ask for that, even, for Martin’s hands on him and further out of his control and in him, if he wanted. To make Jon want it as much as Martin does and almost as naturally desperate to push further. The idea is both chilling and appealing from Elias’s perspective, all the more so for how Elias can trust that his Archivist still would ascertain the seams in any such sewn-in gifted desire. Elias lets himself imagine what Martin ostensibly doesn’t, now, how in the interim Martin could lay his whole hand across Jon’s thigh instead of this brush of fingertips, and track the touch up when Jon spread his legs to push into his palm. How hot Martin’s skin would seem with Jon’s alien, objective, almost-perfect contrast for comparison when he stroked the beginning of an erection Jon would no longer be able to dismiss and Martin wouldn’t have to ignore.

Engaging as it is that Martin himself can come like _this_ , Elias thinks — it’s appealingly exploitable, such that in a corner of his own mind he feels a bit cheated by the current distance meaning he can’t opt to do so — it would certainly go easier for Martin now if he did touch himself, even just pushing up into his own hand without so much as undoing his trousers; and far from finishing faster Elias wants to see him take that time and go _further_ , watch Martin shear off what might remain of his composure and his ability to take further sensation against the face of how much it overwhelms him to do so. Martin’s fantastically reactive with this relatively little, something Elias is additionally gratified to know Jon needs no outside encouragement to appreciate; in many ways it would seem to be what makes this work for both of them. What else could be wrung out of Martin knowing, though, that these soft still-shocked moans are in fact barely a start?

(It would, Elias thinks unabashedly, be a novel contrast in terms of ways to make Martin break his own voice sobbing; potentially a more interesting one in terms of rarity, and certainly one easier to acclimate Jon to. Likely easier to make Martin hold still for. Generally desirable; and he is so far away from the opportunity that it _chafes_.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks be to the usual suspects, and particular gratitude to Teawood for aid in spidering Martin.
> 
> (I intend to continue this yet, so there's that.)


End file.
